19th November 2017

Presenting our researches

We had a tremendous day on Saturday at Clements Hall, showing local people our displays about the fascinating and eventful stories we’ve been exploring in our World War 1 project over the last two years. Thanks to several radio interviews and welcome coverage in the York Press, we attracted many people who’d not seen our work before. (Well done Anne Houson for doing a very early Saturday morning slot on Radio York!)

We were delighted that our local MP, Rachael Maskell was able to join us and hear about our research themes.

Rachael Maskell MP with Chris Maudsley, our filmmaker

Mary Pritchard brought along her wartime memorabilia, and Ken and Linda Haywood gave expert advice about researching World War 1 servicemen in the family. Our talented group members gave a reprise of A Munition Dirge, a song written by a woman working at Cooke’s in Bishophill. We even sampled the delights of delicacies such as trench cake!

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund we’ve been able to produce three free publications and two videos.

We’ve produced Our Local Times, a newspaper to be delivered to houses in the area soon, capturing some of our WW1 local stories. By looking at newspapers of the time, searching online, and exploring local archives, we’ve learned how the war caused misery and upheaval and changed lives for our local residents, often through generations.

The Clementhorpe, Scarcroft and South Bank area was a newly built and expanding suburb of York in 1914, and WW1 affected every business, institution and household. Our second free publication is a map leaflet World War One in Clementhorpe, Scarcroft and South Bank, York: A Heritage Map. This explores the impact of war on the developing area, and on some of the people who lived here. It’s beautifully illustrated and encompasses locations associated with the conflict itself, stories of how residents responded to the challenges war brought, and public memorials that the community raised to those it lost.

The last publication is Scarcroft School York in World War 1, a fascinating booklet about the impact of the war on the school. It’s already gone out to all the families with children at the school and to the staff. The booklet draws upon archives from the school and also letters. At our event John Aked read some of his great uncle Arthur Aked’s letters, a former pupil who died in Belgium in 1917. Actor Tom Davidson gave a fine dramatic presentation of letters from former teacher Edward Hope Hawthorne, who died in 1916. We were delighted to welcome David Hawthorne, his great grandson, who came over from Colne in Lancashire especially to hear this.

All publications are available from Clements Hall Reception, as well as accessible online on this website here.

During the last two years we’ve had brilliant support from our local documentary filmmaker Chris Maudsley, and we were able to show two of his short films produced for our project: York Zeppelin Raids 1916 and Conscience and conscription in WW1: responses from a York neighbourhood. Several members of our group were involved with Chris in presenting the results of our researches and activities on these topics. These are both now available on our YouTube Channel.

Lastly of course our HLF funding has made it possible for us to develop our website to highlight what we’ve been up to over the last two years, and thanks to local firm SeeGreen we’re delighted with the results.